SIMULATION OF DYNAMIC FLOW CHARACTERISTICS IN TAYLORCOUETTE CRYSTALLIZER USING CFD

Dae Hun Kim and Dae Ryook Yang

Dip. Chemical & Biological Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea
(dryang@korea.ac.kr)
Keywords: 2-Dimensional CFD; Taylor-Couette Crystallizer; Mixing effect.
The Taylor-Couette reactor is often used as mixing devices in chemical and bio-process
industries. Recently the reactor has been applied to crystallization field due to its
peculiar flow characteristics. The Taylor-Couette flow is occurred in a viscous fluid
confined in the gap between two concentric cylinders when one or both of the cylinders
are rotating. For low angular velocity, the flow is steady and purely azimuthal which is
called Couette flow. When the angular velocity of the cylinder is increased above a
certain threshold, the Couette flow becomes unstable and another steady state called
Taylor vortex emerges. The Taylor vortex is axisymmetric toroidal vortices. As the
angular velocity is increased further, wavy vortex flow emerges and turbulence occurs
beyond certain limit. But the turbulence region is excluded because it is too complicated
to simulate using CFD.
In this study, the effects of flow conditions on crystal formation and growth in TaylorCouette crystallizer was investigated through two-dimensional CFD simulations up to
wavy vortex region. Typically in the Taylor-Couette reactor, only the inner cylinder
rotates and outer cylinder is stationary. The flow has dimensionless variable Reynolds
number, Re and Taylor number, Ta defined as
Re

ri d
v

ri

Ta Re

where is the inner cylinder angular velocity, and ri is the radius of inner cylinder, d is
the gap of between inner cylinder and outer cylinder (a difference ri and ro), v is the
kinematic viscosity.
If it is operated with continuous feed flow, the reactor can be used as a continuous
crystallizer. In this case, the inner cylinder velocity (ICV) and axial velocity (AV) are
the important manipulated variables. Figure 1 shows the effects of ICV and AV on
vortex formation. In the flow pattern, there are two distinct parts which are vortex and
bypass regions. Most of the crystal nucleation and growth occurs in the vortex region
since the vortex region resides in the reactor longer. Thus, it is important to have larger
portion of vortex region for crystallization.
When ICV is increasing or AV is decreasing, the vortex region is getting dominant and
the portion of Taylor vortices is expanded. Especially, when the AV is increased, the size
of a vortex is significantly reduced and the number of vortices is increased. It is quite

peculiar that the Taylor vortices have alternating rotational directions and dense feed
concentrations appear every other vortex since new vortex is emerging from the top part
of bypass region when the feed is injected from the top of the reactor.

Sliding wall

inlet

outlet

(a)

(b)

Figure 1. Effects of Taylor-Couette flow patterns for various Inner Cylinder Velocity and Axial Velocity,
(a) at AV=0.003m/s, ICV: 0.009m/s, 0.01m/s, 0.02 m/s (b) at ICV:=0.01m/s, AV: 0.001m/s, 0.003m/s,
0.005m/s.

The most important parameter determining the flow regimes is Ta (a function of Re).
Taylor-Couette flow patterns are affected by the kinematic viscosity and the kinematic
viscosity is changed with temperature. Thus, the effect of temperature is similar to that
of ICV and AV. The increase of temperature will lower the kinematic viscosity and the
effect of raising temperature seems to be similar to the increase of ICV. Figure 2 shows
the changes of flow patterns when the heat flux is added at the outer cylinder.

Figure 2. Effect of Taylor-Couette flow patterns for various heat fluxes from outside cylinder (Heat flux:
-1 W/m2, 0 W/m2, +1 W/m2 from left).

If the ICV reached certain critical velocity, the flow is changed to wavy vortex flow and
the Taylor vortices become unstable. The wavy vortex flow has certain periodic
behavior characterized by the azimuthal wave number and the size of vortices is
changed periodically. The fluctuation of Taylor vortices is simulated in middle figure of
Fig. 3(b). The color of the vortices indicates the velocity and the velocity distribution of
the wavy vortex is rather uniform compared to Taylor vortex which implies enhanced
circulation inside the vortices.
In real experiments, it is quite difficult to verify how the crystal particles behave inside
the flow field of the reactor. However, the CFD simulation can predict the behavior of

Sliding wall

the particles using the line tracing and point tracing features. In this study, 100 particles
are injected from the top of the crystallizer at the base condition (ICV= 0.01m/s and
AV=0.003m/s).

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 3. (a) Velocity profile of onset of Taylor vortex (Ta: 52), (b) wavy vortex (Ta: 2223) time step: 0.3s,
(c) a typical velocity profile inside a wavy vortex (well-mixed).

Figure 4 shows the track of particles after injection. The most of the particles are
trapped and reside in the vortices and proceed to exit depending on AV.

(a)

(b)

Figure 4. Particle tracing in Taylor-Couette reactor (ICV: 0.01m/s, Re: 130, Ta: 74); (a) line, (b) points
(time step:100s).

This crystallizer provides extended residence time and less shear force so that the
breakage of the crystals can be reduced while the growth of the crystal is enhanced. In
order to estimate the mean residence time of the particles in the Taylor-Couette
crystallizer, 100 particles are introduced and the residence times for each particle are
measured. As shown in Fig. 5, the ICV is fixed at 0.01m/s (Re: 130, Ta: 74) and the AV
is changed from 0.003m/s to 0.01m/s. When AV is 0.003m/s, the mean residence time of
solution is 654.70s while mean residence time of particle is 787.69s. Mean residence
time of particle is longer than that of solution by around 130s. And when the axial
velocity is increased to 0.01m/s, the mean residence time of solution is 196.4s while the
mean residence time of particle is 251.44s. The difference is about 60s. From this result,
the Taylor-Couette crystallizer has longer mean residence time of particle because most
of the particles are trapped in the vortices and the moving speed of the vortices are
slower than the solution velocity due to the difference in flow distribution between the
vortices and bypass. This feature will provide the preferable condition for crystal

growth. However, it might give the detrimental effect on the nucleation. For example, if
the large amount of nucleation is not desirable for crystal size control, the degree of
supersaturation should be controlled so that the large amount of fine particles are not
generated.

(a)

(c)

(b)

(d)

Figure 5. Particle mean residence time at different AV, (a) 0.003m/s, (b) 0.005m/s, (c) 0.007m/s, (d)
0.01m/s.
Table 1. Fluid and particles mean residence time.
AV (m/s)
Mean residence time (s)
Particles mean residence time (s)

0.003
654.7
787.69

0.005
392.5
424.06

0.007
280.57
319.93

0.01
196.4
251.44

While the mixing affects the crystal size distribution, batch crystallizer may exhibit poor
mixing and profiles of temperature and concentration of solvent and anti-solvent are not
uniform. From the simulations, it seems that the Taylor-Couette crystallizer works as a
series of well mixed small batch reactors where the Taylor vortices provide intra-vortex
mixing. As a result, the crystals will be exposed to a uniform degree of supersaturation
in each vortex and the resulting CSD will be narrow and uniform.
References:
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Cylinders. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A, 1923, 223, 289-343.
[2] Weinstein, M. Wavy Vortices in the Flow between Two Long Eccentric Rotating
Cylinders. I. Linear theory. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A. 1977, 354, 441-457.
[3] Richard john Campero.; Dennis Vigil R. Axial Dispersion During Low Reynolds
Number Taylor-Couette Flow: Intra-Vortex Mixing Effects. Chemical Engineering
Science. 1997 52, 3303-3310.
[4] Murray Rudman. Mixing and Particle Dispersion in the Wavy Vortex Regime of
Taylor-Couette Flow. AIChE Journal. 1998, 44, 1015-1026.
[5] Wang Mo Jung.; Sung Hoon Kang.; Woo-Sik Kim.; Chang Kyun Choi. Particle
Morphology of Calcium Carbonate Precipitated by Gas-Liquid Reaction in a TaylorCouette Reactor. Chemical Engineering Science. 2000, 55, 733-747.